Lost Control of USB-UIRT

[sic0048]

I just had to troubleshoot my parents system. They CQC server was up and running, but it was not responding to IR commands. I remoted in and could control things via the AI, so it wasn't that things were locked up. I put the USB-UIRT driver into high verbose log status, but nothing was logged after 5-10 minutes I spent troubleshooting. The driver was "online" the whole time.

Since I was doing this remotely (and asking my parents to check connections and press buttons, etc) I didn't spend as much time troubleshooting as I might on my system. But during the troubleshooting session, I was sure the remote and Xantech IR system were working just fine. Everything pointed to the USB-UIRT as the problem even though there was nothing out of the ordinary in the logs. Eventually I simply rebooted the computer. The system did start to respond to IR commands when it came back online. So all is working fine again now.

Has anyone else had a simillar issue? I'd just like to know what to expect in the future. I've never had a USB-UIRT failure like that, and I don't remember anyone else having a similar problem.

Any ideas?

[NishanF]

yup - this happens to me about once a month. Everything looks normal, but the usb-uirt doesn't respond. A reboot fixes it.

Nishan

[LesAuber]

I haven't had any trouble with this but then I reboot pretty regular. Might be worth dropping Jon Rhees at USB-UIRT a note. Perhaps you can get him and Dean to collaborate a bit on it. This sounds like something that they'd want to resolve for the customer systems.

[Dean Roddey]

One useful test would be not to reboot, but to cycle the CQC service on that machine. That would differentiate between a hardware issue (which only a reboot would fix) or a CQC issue which a CQC service cycle would fix. If that doesn't fix it, try unplugging and re-plugging in the UIRT. That will cause the system to unload and then reload the drive. If that fixes it, it might point to something more between the UIRT and the system in USB terms, but not a hardware issue.

[sic0048]

I'll be sure to try those tests if it happens again. Thanks for the suggestions Dean.

[zaccari]

I occasionally have issues with my office computer which has a UIRT on it where it stops recognizing IR. I attributed it to something else on that machine since my MS also has one attached without the same problem. I will tell you that an easy fix is to NET STOP "CQC APPLICATION SHELL" and then start it. All should be wonderful then.

Russ...

[anogee]

I have that problem as well. Any automated way to stop and restart a process nightly? I use this program called WatchDog-O-Matic WatchDog-O-Matic than can do a similar thing, but the problem is the CQC process doesn't actually appear dead, so it never resets the process. Also, I'm guessing that the CQC APPLICATION SHELL isn't the actual process which is stopping.

[batwater]

I dot it nightly with SageTV by using a command file and the windows event scheduler.

For CQC it would be

Code:

@echo off
echo stoping CQCAppShell Service
net stop cqcappshell
echo Sleeping for 30 seconds
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 30 > nul
echo starting CQCAppShell Service
net start cqcappshell

note that this line ping 127.0.0.1 -n 30 > nul is time delay to allow for service to stop prior to restarting. Adjust the time 30 based on observing how long it takes for the service to stop from the command line.

-Ben

[sic0048]

One useful test would be not to reboot, but to cycle the CQC service on that machine. That would differentiate between a hardware issue (which only a reboot would fix) or a CQC issue which a CQC service cycle would fix. If that doesn't fix it, try unplugging and re-plugging in the UIRT. That will cause the system to unload and then reload the drive. If that fixes it, it might point to something more between the UIRT and the system in USB terms, but not a hardware issue.

Well as luck would have it (depending on how you look at it), my USB-UIRT wasn't working tonight on my system. So I cycled the CQC Service and it fixed the issue. Given that, it does seem to point to a CQC issue.

Any suggestions on ways we can help to track down any potential problems?

[Dean Roddey]

Well as luck would have it (depending on how you look at it), my USB-UIRT wasn't working tonight on my system. So I cycled the CQC Service and it fixed the issue. Given that, it does seem to point to a CQC issue.

Any suggestions on ways we can help to track down any potential problems?

If you could put the driver into verbose mode and try some commands and see if you see anything useful in the logs. Of course this doesn't completely point in one direction. By stopping CQC, it closes the process that is running the UIRT DLL, and that would undo any issues that were happening between it and the hardware as well.

So it would be useful if it got into that state to try just an unplug and plug it back in. If that makes it happy, that might point more towards the UIRT DLL and the hardware. If not, it would more more strongly towards the CQC -> UIRT connection.